


A Hundred Years Gone By

by 35_leukothea



Series: They Never Really Leave Us [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 10:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1424785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/35_leukothea/pseuds/35_leukothea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck in a cold, abandoned colonial manor on a rainy day, Dean and Cas decide to explore the crumbling old house while waiting for Sam to return from the university library.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Years Gone By

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SORRY I REALLY LOVE OVERUSED PREDICTABLE ROMANTIC TROPES SO JUST AS A WARNING THIS IS CLICHÉ AS FUCK *hides face*
> 
> I've been reading Jane Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_ lately, which is where I got the inspiration to do this (because of course I'm thinking about destiel when I'm reading 19th century romantic comedies), and I thought it'd be really cute and fluffy so I did it!  
>  the inspiration for the music definitely doesn't come from the piano songs I am supposed to be practicing right now hahahaha??
> 
> enjoy! please tell me what you think <3

It was cold. Cold and rainy and dark, even inside the manor. And creaky! The floorboards in this place would screech in agony if you dropped even a pin on them. Not to mention it hadn't been cleaned—or, indeed, inhabited at all—in more than a century. Dean's prissy, high-maintenance neat-freak gene had kicked in as soon as he stepped inside (which is to say, he'd started complaining), but after a few minutes of mindlessly ranting about the state of the house, he realized neither his brother nor his angel, who were setting up electric lighting, were listening. 

"Ugh, can you even believe this?" he muttered irately at nobody in particular. "Look at this, look at my hand, I touched the doorknob and now it's dirtier than if I'd—"

"Quit bitching, Princess," Sam interrupted before he had the chance to hear whatever innuendo Dean was about to pull out his sleeve. "Save it for the housekeeper's ghost."

"You sound like Bobby," Dean said.

"Well, one of us better have, or we're screwed," Sam retorted. "Where'd Cas go?"

"I'm here," came the angel's deep voice from the adjacent room. "If Dean thinks the entryway is dirty he should see the kitchen."

"Oh God," Dean whispered dramatically, then faked gagging.

Sam grinned. "Can't wait," he said genially.

"What do you mean, 'can't wait'?" asked his brother suspiciously. "You're leaving."

He sighed. "You're right," he admitted, in the tone of someone about to say something ironic or sarcastic. "As much as I enjoy seeing you in extreme discomfort, I am afraid that I must leave the comfort of this lovely place to head for somewhere a bit more"—he put on his signature smirk—" _pleasant_."

Dean shot him a death glare and snapped, "Just get your sorry ass out of here."

Sam laughed, knowing he'd won, and grabbed the keys to the Impala. "I'll be back in a few hours," he shouted over his shoulder.

"Bring food!" Dean shouted back at him, but the door slammed shut before he got an answer. It probably would've been some snarky remark, anyway. After a few moments, he drew his jacket closer around him and turned to go find his angel, reassuring himself that staying behind was the better choice. The desire to be in a well-furnished, heated library had been overcome by his wanting to spend more time with Castiel; after a bit of internal debate before arriving, he had decided that being cold in a damp, musky colonial era manor with boyfriend was preferable to being comfortable in a crowded library researching a case for hours on end with brother. In addition, it had become that he could barely even  _look_ at Cas anymore without being shot a "get a room" glance from Sam, who seemed to be allergic to any display of romantic affection even though Dean was the one with the policy of no "chick-flick" moments. (It was, of course, quite possible that Dean was overreacting, but as we are in his head at the present time, it is very unlikely he will admit to that—because, I mean, who are we kidding, this is Dean.) 

He pushed open the door to the room he'd heard Cas go into before and was greeted by another blast of cold air—one of the windows had been shattered, letting in rain and wind. "Dammit," he muttered vaguely. It wasn't even that cold of a day; indeed, it was considerably warm for late March in New England, but the storm had caused the temperature to drop a good fifteen degrees or so.

Either that, or it was a spirit.

Dean wasn't exactly sure why this house seemed to be so silent, since they'd looked it up and found out that with its age came a large amount of deaths on its grounds. They'd EMF'd the place pretty well before setting up shop there, as well as doing the regular anti-anythingthatwantsaWinchesterdead procedures. Unless the spirit or spirits had been dormant or were exceptionally powerful, the place wasn't haunted as far as he could tell. It was still really fucking cold though. It had been Sam's idea to stay there, because it was the closest shelter within a short drive of where their current hunt was located—i.e., Nowhere, Middle Of. Somewhere in Appalachia. They'd stayed in abandoned buildings before when they'd had to, and this time, the nearest motel was nearly a hundred miles and over an hour and a half away.

"What, so you're gonna go to a university library halfway across the state to read up on a job that'll last two days but you're not gonna let me book us a room?" Dean had argued when Sam brought the idea up.

"If it's only going to last two days, why book a room?" Sam had responded logically. "Besides, the money that would go to the motel and gas for the long car rides could be put somewhere more useful."

Dean looked at him incredulously. "Sam, it's not even our money."

Sam groaned and put his head in his hands. "That's not the point! Just sleep in the Impala if you want, but we are _not_  taking that drive. For the sake of the car, at least. These roads are fucking awful."

That was what had won Sam the argument. Now, as he shielded himself from the biting cold, he grumbled nonsensically and reminded himself it was for his baby's good before looking around the room. "Cas?"

Castiel poked his head out from behind a cupboard door ajar, a glass container of something congealed and vaguely yellowish in his hands. "Dean, look what I found!" he said excitedly, thrusting it out for him to look at.

Dean made a face. "Ew, don't give me that!" he protested immediately, shoving it away. "Don't you know that food goes bad after three hundred years?"

"No, Dean, it's honey!" Cas explained. "Honey doesn't spoil." He sniffed the content of the jar experimentally. "See? It's fine."

He looked at it skeptically. "Whatever you say, man—just don't make me taste it. And you know what, I don't care if your divine digestive system can handle centuries-old food or if honey doesn't spoil, don't try and eat anything you find in here, okay?"

Cas laughed, and Dean was momentarily alarmed ( _he knows I'm not joking, right? He knows that that one actually wasn't a joke?_ ) before he screwed the jar's lid shut and put it back in the cupboard. "Don't worry," he assured him. "I won't."

Dean sighed. "Good," he said. "Do you wanna look around a bit? I think I'll turn into an icicle if I stay still too long."

"It isn't below freezing point," Cas pointed out.

"I was kidding."

"Oh. Well, sure. Are you cold then?"

He sighed again. Castiel could never seem to find the right balance between taking things too literally and not taking them literally enough. "Yes, I am," he told him patiently. "Humans get cold easily, some more so than others."

"Interesting," said Cas seriously, then put his hand in Dean's and started dragging him around the ground floor. His touch was icy as well (being an angel, he didn't feel it), but the harsh winter that was only now letting up in this part of the country hadn't dried and cracked the skin around his knuckles—his power kept his vessel unblemished from things like that, bruises and paper cuts and such. Dean ran his thumb over the back of Cas' hand almost unconsciously (almost) as they walked.

"So how many people do you think died in this place?" he asked, sounding mildly disgusted. "Sam said it's got a bloody history. Still can't understand why there was nothing on the EMF."

"They could've died of natural causes," Cas offered. "Doctors did house calls back then, so sick people stayed at home. Last I checked dying of pneumonia does not borne many angry spirits."

"Didn't doctors think bleeding people was a thing that worked?" said Dean. "That's kind of violent."

"Are you really so determined for this house to be haunted?"

"Anything to pass the time."

Cas shrugged, then let go of Dean's hand momentarily as they walked into a room with large windows on the opposite wall to pull dirty linen covers off a few pieces of furniture. Dean coughed as the dust rose, but instead of the expected emotion of distaste, there was something else he felt as he saw Cas uncover a carved wooden desk, a stiff-backed sofa with cushions embroidered with flowers and birds, a painting easel with a piece of yellowed parchment, crumbling and torn, still on it. Something seemed wrong.

Cas was about to uncover another piece of furniture—a chair, by the look of it—but stopped as he saw Dean's expression. "You are uncomfortable," he observed. It was a statement.

Dean glanced at him quickly. "Hm? Oh, um, I dunno..." He shrugged. "I guess so."

Cas narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, and if he hadn't been feeling so odd, he would've remembered to think his squinting was cute. "I'll stop, then," he said, stepping away from the furniture.

"What?" asked Dean. "Why?"

"Because you don't like it," Cas responded simply.

"Er...I'm perfectly okay with it?"

"No, you aren't." Cas began to do the thing where he explained Dean's own feelings to him better than he ever could have, which sometimes made him want to punch a wall, or, in extreme cases, another person. "You don't like disrupting the solitude that has been maintained for a hundred years now, which given that for you, a century is a long time, is quite understandable. However, you are also a person that holds onto what was and what could or should have been rather tightly, perhaps more so than is considered healthy or normal. For you, when I took those covers off, dozens of memories that weren't even yours were released into the air with the dust, lost forever along with its isolation. Those things now know new air, will now live in a new time with new customs and new people, and they can never go back to before."

Dean blinked at him for a moment. He considered saying something sarcastic (along the lines of _I didn't ask for poetry_ ), but found that he couldn't, because as usual when Cas did this, he'd just had a tiny piece of his soul cut free, dissected, and laid out in front of him like it was a book to be read, and it had rendered him speechless. "Uh..." He cleared his throat awkwardly, feeling slightly uncomfortable under his angel's unwavering gaze. "Thanks, Cas."

He stared at him confusedly for a moment. "'Thanks'?" he repeated.

Dean nodded. "Thanks," he said again. "For explaining. It, uh...it helps."

"But I thought you don't li—"

"I  _don't_ ," Dean interrupted him, exasperating. _Fucking empath. Empaths don't even exist._  "Just..." He shook his head. "Just let it be, okay? It's not important."

Cas shrugged and walked back over to the carved desk to examine it. The top of it was a bookcase covered in old glass, so dusty Dean realized he couldn't even tell what was inside as he moved to stand next to him. The lock was jammed a bit but wasn't shut, so Cas managed to get it open in a couple seconds—however, he overestimated the force required to open it and ended up jerking the bookcase so hard that most the books and a shit ton of dust came tumbling out onto his head. He cried out in surprise and jumped away but only succeeded in tripping and falling over backwards, causing the wood flooring to screech in protest.

This all happened so quickly that for a moment afterwards, there was nothing but complete silence. Then Cas sat up slowly and the floor planks creaked again, and Dean began to laugh, harder and harder until he could barely breathe for all the dust in the air. "Oh my  _God_ , Cas," he croaked, trying to catch his breath.

"It's not funny!" his angel protested as he stood up, sounding highly offended. 

"It's hilarious," he said, straightening and tightening the other's tie. Then he rested his elbows on Cas' shoulders and proceeded to comb his fingers through his dark, messy hair to get all the dirt out, enjoying the sensation too much to stop when the dirt was gone. "You're cute when you're flustered."

Cas scowled and mumbled something about "not my fault." Dean laughed again. There was a short pause in which he simply kept untangling and tidying Cas' hair.

"Dean," said Cas eventually.

"Mm?"

"I, uh..." He clearly had no idea what to say, and Dean forced himself not to smile with some difficulty.

"Yes?" he prompted. He really was pretty cute when he was flustered.

Cas opened his mouth, but after a split-second's hesitation, his expression turned into a sulky glare. "You're laughing at me."

Dean couldn't hide his grin anymore. "No, I'm not," he said unconvincingly.

"Yes, you are!" Cas insisted. "You're making fun of me."

"Making fun of someone and laughing at someone are two different things," he pointed out.

"They are?"

"Yeah, if I laugh at you it's because you give me amusement. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm mocking you like it would if I were making fun of you. I wouldn't mock you, Cas."

"Oh." He still sounded a little upset, and though Dean knew it'd be forgotten in a few minutes, his tone still made him feel a little bad.

"Hey, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings or anything," he said. He took one hand from the nape of Cas' neck and placed it against his face, gently running his thumb along his cheekbone. 

"It's okay," Cas said simply and truthfully, with something of a shrug. 

Dean kissed him lightly. "We should probably pick these books up."

"Yeah." Cas sat down cross-legged to gather them up—the floor wailed in complaint—and began handing them to Dean to put back in the bookcase. Most of them were books Dean had never heard of, and some of them he couldn't even tell what they were called, but after a short while, Cas paused to look at a certain book as if he recognized it.

"What's that?" asked Dean. 

Cas didn't respond, just stared at it blankly.

Dean stopped filing and bent down to look over his shoulder. "Cas, what..." He trailed off as he saw the book in his angel's hands and his lips formed a silent _oh_. It was thick, bound in dark bluish leather, with faint gold letters imprinted on the cover making the title only just decipherable. It was the Bible.

There was a moment of deathly silence before Dean snatched the book away from Cas on a little more than an impulse and shoved it into the bookcase. "Moving on," he said pointedly, picking up another book and beginning to file again like nothing had happened.

At first Cas didn't move, but after a moment he gradually picked up his pace. This time around he began to flip through the books for a couple seconds before handing them to Dean, as if to make sure they weren't anything else he didn't like. Soon enough he found another one that caught his eye, but this one he seemed to be okay with.

"It's an Austen," he said aloud, as if he'd been asked a question. He opened the cover and glanced over a few yellowed pages of it. " _Pride and Prejudice_ , the second book she published."

This meant nothing to Dean. "Have you read it?"

"Yes, I read all of them," he said. "When they were new, of course. Miss Austen was very talented, and much of what she wrote is still relevant."

"Is it?" Dean said, not particularly interested in whatever Miss Austen had written. 

"Yes, it is." Cas didn't notice his indifferent tone. "Her stories revolve around society and peoples' natures. In this one, she talks about the issues of marriage, trust and judgement and things like that. Her 'truth universally acknowledged' was more relevant in the time she lived, though."

"And what is her truth universally acknowledged?"

"'A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,'" he quoted. "At the time, marriage was one of the most important things that could ever happen to a person, and it could determine the outcome of their entire life."

Dean thought about this for a moment. It made perfect sense, of course, but he had to disagree that a single man in possession of a good fortune may not  _necessarily_ be in want of a _wife_. "She sounds sensible," he observed.

"Very," agreed Castiel. "Though she actually writes through her main character in this one, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, that she believes the appearance of sensibility does nothing to show how much sense a person truly possesses. She even mentions what one might today call a 'fatal flaw' in a conversation between Miss Bennet and another main character, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Miss Bennet claims that Mr. Darcy has a tendency to simply hate every person he meets, and Mr. Darcy responds accordingly that she, in turn, has a tendency to misinterpret them."

Most of that went over Dean's head, partially because he wasn't really listening and partially because he was trying to jam another hardcover in between two already-stuffed bookends. "Let me guess," he said—"They get married?"

Cas laughed. "Yes, but initially, they absolutely despise each other."

"That much is obvious. What kind of a name is  _Fitzwilliam_ , anyway?"

"These were written in the early nineteenth century, Dean."

"Yeah, yeah." He took the book from Cas and put it back on the shelf, and they finished rearranging the rest of the novels soon enough. Cas stood up and brushed off his trenchcoat, then proceeded to the next room over as Dean shut the bookcase door and shot a last remorseful glance at the painting easel and the embroidered cushions. In this silence, the rain seemed to grow harder, even if just by a little bit, and he could hear thunder rolling in a low tone, but louder than before. The eye of the storm would be passing over them soon, if this wind kept up. He wasn't bothered by rainstorms at all, but lightning used to scare him a lot when he was little (more than he'd ever admit), because he had been taught endlessly by his father, John, that electrical storms had sometimes nothing but almost always everything to do with demonic omens. He wasn't afraid of it  _now_ , of course, but it still made him feel a bit uneasy. He shook his head once, as though flicking away bothersome thoughts, then followed Cas through the house.

He found him in a wide, open room floored with now-cracked tile rather than wood. There were floor-length windows all around (they must've been thicker than the others, because they hadn't broken), giving them a good view of the darkness outside, and in the middle, a heavy canvas sheet lay over what seemed to be a fallen chandelier ( _Phantom of the Opera much?_ ). Cas was standing at the far end by another covered shape that Dean didn't quite recognize, though felt he should. It was rather large; he estimated it to be six feet long or so. He walked over, careful not to trip in any cracks in the floor.

For a minute, he stood behind Castiel, both of them silent, watching the rain pour down on the overgrown grounds of the manner. Finally, Cas nodded his head towards the covered figure and said, his voice low and scratchy, "May I?"

"Sure," Dean said, quietly as well. He suddenly felt as if he were intruding on something, the same way as when Cas had started uncovering furniture before, but this time in a different way. He turned around slowly to look at the cracked floor, the fallen chandelier, the dusty sills. This place, just like the rest of the house, had known no life for more than a century—but unlike the rest of the house, it'd seen the outside world grow and change while it stayed locked in time. He walked to look out of a grimy window, so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't hear Cas uncovering the mystery object. He rubbed his sleeve against the glass to clear it a bit more (no  _way_ he was touching that with his hands), and found that what this room must've looked onto at one point was a garden, because he saw tiny crocuses and lilies-of-the-valley poking their heads out from underneath the leaves of vines and weeds, eager for spring to start early. He didn't know much about plants, but he did know that once you planted a garden, it stayed a garden even after a hundred years of growing wild.

Suddenly, there was an odd, melodic noise, though somewhat dampened and fuzzy-sounding, from where Cas stood on the other side of the room, and Dean jerked his head up to see where it had come from, noting how familiar it sounded—

Oh.

It was a piano. A grand piano, or something. _How did I not recognize that?_ he wondered, bewildered, as he walked towards it. It was now clear why this room was so spacious and wide open, with tile for floor and windows for walls and a giant chandelier; it was a ballroom. Cas had gotten the lid of the piano up and was now brushing dust off of the metal strings inside, which was probably what had caused the note he'd played to sound so muffled. Dean had no idea how a piano worked, but he was pretty sure a century's worth of dust wasn't good for its ability to function.

"Can you play?" he asked as he watched Cas prod around in the instrument's depths. A split-second after he said it, he realized it was a stupid question, because this was _Castiel_ he was talking about—he could probably do hundreds of random things Dean could never even think of. He could probably wire an electronics board, and shoe a horse. He could probably write Chinese characters. He could probably even remember who had lived in this house once upon a time if he tried hard enough.

But if Cas thought it was a stupid question, he didn't show it, because he responded with a simple "yes." After a few more moments of standing behind him a bit awkwardly, Dean poked his head under the piano lid as well and watched as Cas attended to it, gently and carefully as if it could feel what he was doing to it. If Sam had been there, he would've noted how much it reminded him of the way Dean attended to the Impala, but Dean (being Dean) did not make this connection himself. Eventually it came to be that he watched Cas' hands working rather than what they were actually doing. The skill with which he touched and handled the piano strings and little bits and pieces behind the keys was amazing, but the speed at which he accomplished cleaning out the inside of the instrument was even more so. Dean would've been so afraid he'd break something or do something wrong it would've taken him an hour at least to clean it; Cas accomplished the task (to his own satisfaction, at least) in under ten minutes.

Finally, he pulled himself out from under the lid took a few steps back, brushing his hands off. "That should be good," he said.

Dean blinked at him. "Good?" he repeated. "For what?"

Cas smiled a lopsided smile. "For to play it."

For a moment Dean was speechless—why on Earth hadn't that occurred to him? Of course he hadn't just cleaned a grand piano for his own amusement. "What...what are you going to play?" he asked at last. "There's no music. Is there?"

Cas responded by pulling the piano's bench out from underneath it, which Dean hadn't noticed before, and opening it: inside, there was a jumble of sheet music, yellowed and fading. Most of it looked to be hand-written. He took a few sheets out and began sorting them into different piles, which Dean assumed corresponded to the pieces they belonged to. Every once in a while Dean would try and pick up a piece of paper to look at it (although he couldn't read music so it just looked like nonsense), and Cas would shove his hand away instantly as if to snap,  _Don't you fucking mess these up after I arranged them perfectly or I will bash your fucking skull in so help me Father_ , which Dean found hilarious.

After he'd had laughed enough that he began coughing again, Cas decided he was finished and picked two pieces he wanted to play. He put the others back in the bench in neat little stacks, then swept his trenchcoat out from under him as he sat down and straightened up, putting a foot on the damper pedal and his hands lightly on the keys. Dean perched on the bench on his right, watching him intently. He noted internally that the storm had worsened so much that the wind outside was growing close to too-powerful-to-be-safe-in-a-fishbowl-of-a-room, just in case they needed to leave in a hurry. _  
_

"What are you playing?" Dean asked before Cas had a chance to start.

"Sonatina, opus thirty-six number two in G major, by Clementi," he responded, in a sentence that sounded like gibberish to Dean. "This must've been relatively new at the time." And then he began to play.

The sound of the piece of was very quiet and delicate against the pounding rain outside, and though its sounds were lively, the gentle way in which it was played made its speed seem calming rather than energizing. Dean liked it very much, and he liked it even more because it was Cas who was playing it. He wrapped his arms around his angel's waist and laid his head on his shoulder, enjoying the sounds the old piano made, even if they weren't in tune. After a short while, the song became much slower and adopted a new melody, which was equally pleasant. Dean decided, a bit reluctantly, that perhaps classical music wasn't so boring after all.

After that song was finished, Cas played a few bars of something he called "Song of the Lark" from memory, which was also delicate but much more excited than the previous piece, but decided halfway through he wanted to play something else and began shuffling through the sheet music again until he came upon something he liked. Dean found his indecisiveness positively adorable but he wasn't sure why. 

Cas tried a few more bars of random pieces before he finally found something he wanted to play all of, and it turned out that that was the only song he'd played yet that Dean had heard of—the famous Für Elise. There were other things that sounded vaguely familiar (Cas said they were by the same composer as Song of the Lark and were still very famous), and every piece he chose had a very quiet, calming air about it. Dean realized that he was for some reason immensely tired by the time his angel began to play the melodic tones of Für Elise, which he played a lot more slowly that he thought they were supposed to be—then again, he knew nothing about classical music. Whatever way he played it, Dean enjoyed it.

Dean actually did doze off on Cas' shoulder once as he played, but it was the sort of sleep that felt like it lasted a grand total of two seconds (it only lasted a couple of minutes anyway) and he was awoken by a huge crash of thunder from right overhead. He jerked awake, and in his surprise, Cas stopped playing for the first time in a long time. 

"That's our cue," muttered Dean, standing up and rubbing the back of his neck. "It's about to get really bad, but it should pass us by in a short while."

Cas stood up as well, and without saying anything more, they headed back to the parlor room, where they'd set up sheets and blankets on a few old couches for sleeping. Dean wondered vaguely where Sam was, but in his fuzzy mental state forgot that rain made driving through a mountainous region even worse than it already was. When they got back to the entrance room, he didn't even bother changing into something more comfortable for sleeping—he simply fell onto the sofa, dragging Castiel down with him, pulled a couple blankets over both of them (it really was rather cold), and shut his eyes. He fell asleep trying to ignore the crashing thunder and the lightning he could see through his closed eyelids that used to scare him so much. Comfortably warm and curled up with his angel, his head tucked into Cas' shoulder and Cas' head resting on his, he felt he would be content like this if even a hundred years went by.

* * *

It was late when Sam came home.

Well, "home," as in the abandoned building they were staying in for a few nights. The rain had reduced by that time to an insistent drizzle, a pleasant noise on the rooftop of the old manor. The electric lamps were still on, so he assumed that Dean and Castiel were still awake and almost shouted out his arrival upon coming in through the parlor room door, but caught sight of his brother and the angel just in time to shut his mouth. He shook his head slightly and laughed a little to himself, in a sort of  _I can't even believe this_ way. He sighed and set down his bag, full of notes and materials from the university library, and decided it'd be kinder if he didn't remind either of them tomorrow that he'd seen. He could imagine the exact look of mortification on Dean's face, but for some reason, it didn't seem as amusing as it usually did.  _I'm getting soft_ , he thought to himself. Without much further ado, he, too, went to bed, on the sofa on the opposite side of the room. His sleep was pleasant. He dreamed of Jessica.

 

**Author's Note:**

> pieces Cas plays parts of:  
> • Clementi - Sonatina Op.36 No.2 in G Major  
> • Tchaikovsky - Song of the Lark, Dance of the Swans, Scene  
> • Beethoven - Für Elise
> 
> you should go look those up on YouTube, they're lovely pieces, and I listened to them while writing this for inspiration. my advice is: when in doubt—classical music. I certify that this can 100% be applied to any situation I am a music professional
> 
>  
> 
> full quotes from my copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ :
> 
> • "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. / However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters." (5)
> 
> • "There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." / "And _your_ defect is a propensity to hate everybody." / "And yours...is wilfully to misunderstand them." (51)
> 
> • “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.”  
> -Elizabeth Bennet (117)


End file.
